By Sidney Garcia & Myrna L. Datilus
Self-worth is an important topic that many tend to emphasize in reference to their personal lives but rarely mention in reference to their professional lives. Sidney Garcia, our last SIS interviewee, has collaborated with me on this blog post to discuss how to realize your self-worth within your sales career. I will explore her essay, “Self-worth as it relates to Sales & Success,” and I’ll add my insight below. In this post, we’re going to explore self-worth, why it’s hard to build, and how we can get over the challenges to developing it and owning it.
Sidney mentions how we are forced to think about what self-worth really is it, and what does it have to do with our sales careers? It seems like everyone is talking about self-worth and self-love, but even with all the good reading out there and positive stories circulating the internet, the idea of deep-seated self-love is still a tough one to fully embody. Now, no matter who you are or where you come from, we all struggle with it to a degree, particularly women of color in the sales industry, but how do we really define self-worth?
A sense of self-worth is like a personal thermostat around one’s comfort level with receiving. That could mean receiving respect, opportunity, promotions, love, pay, abuse, abundance, freedom…you name it. It’s both something you can feel and something you embody with behavior; you feel a certain level of worthiness, and how you feel will directly determine how you behave outwardly in the world. Those feelings become projected through our actions and behavior, and then people react to that behavior, like a mirror. It is similar to the Law of Attraction concept which is the ability to attract into our lives whatever we are focusing on. The main difference is that with self-worth you must not only believe in what you are attracting, but be in a position to receive it as well; this is something I personally struggle with when it comes to love, but that is for another blog post on a different platform.
Wherever our thermostat rests is how we project our behavior onto the world regularly, and how we act then prompts people to respond to us in a similar way. This means so much in a career like sales when we are constantly interacting with other people. What we believe about ourselves is subconsciously picked up on by our customers, our colleagues, our internal resources, our managers, etc. It’s picked up on by how we show up to our meetings, negotiations, and strategy calls. Someone who is confident about their voice owns the room differently and isn’t afraid to share their opinions, expertise or ask questions, and others will reflect that back and listen. Someone who respects their own time will have different boundaries that other people respect when it comes to setting up meetings or sending an agenda ahead of time. Someone who believes in their value to the company will be more likely to receive a promotion because people will notice that sense of self-worth and then see it for themselves too. We generally have the power to attract certain people, promotions or pay into our lives by how we project ourselves into the world.
It all comes down to our beliefs. Sidney gives us this example around money, one that blocked her from receiving the pay she deserved until she corrected it. Sidney’s parents are from Mexico and mine from Haiti, so it was very common to hear our parents complain about having to work very hard with over-time in order to make more money. On a subconscious level, this turned into the beliefs you have to work hard for money, money means my parents spend less time with me because they’re working, and the classic one my mom used to say, money doesn’t grow on trees. The hard-wiring events in our lives are so powerful on a very subconscious level, that I wouldn’t want to receive money because I don’t want the pain that’s associated to come with it. I might say on the outside “I want tons of money,” but my projected behavior and how I portray myself won’t be in congruence with that statement. Instead, I might complain about money, I might get nervous when it comes to paying the bills or I might not go after the promotion as hard because a deeper part of me doesn’t want to violate the value of being able to spend time with my friends & family…see the problem? There’s literally biochemistry happening in the brain that is working against the goals I say I want; it’s like an instinct. Negative or “incongruent” beliefs like this also exist when it comes to how we feel about ourselves, and they get in the way of our ability to receive respect, pay, love, or freedom every day. This is exactly why embodying something we “say” we want can be a lot more challenging than it sounds. Biochemistry is a powerful force of nature. I, like many women, am very dialed into my emotions, and yet- I never once let on to anyone that beliefs and insecurities like these were a part of my reality and on a deep level holding me back. That’s because I didn’t understand them.
The good news is that you are so much more powerful than beliefs and biochemistry and once you’re aware of what they are, you can begin to change them. Over the next several weeks, Sidney will be deep-diving into how that self-worth directly affects our sales results and careers when it comes to showing up fully as ourselves, communicating with our customers, getting the promotions, and not depleting our energy — all challenges women seemingly have to face to a greater degree. She will be doing this through her business, The Blum Business Academy via her Facebook group, The Mastery of Relationship Sales.
In this series, Sidney’s greatest wish is for women is to begin to understand their true potential that lies in their sense of self-worth. Her hope is that we can begin to show ourselves and this world how great we are with some killer sales results this year. It’s time we close the pay-gaps and start enjoying more of what’s good in life, isn’t it?
So, for the love of life & business, we really encourage you all to tap into your self-worth, never cheating yourself of all the amazing opportunities at your fingertips for both your personal and professional lives!
